Book Notes - CONFETTI AND ASHES: REFLECTIONS ON WELLNESS
Summary
In Confetti and Ashes: Reflections on Wellness, Dr. Shahd Alshammari writes with candidness and vulnerability about having MS and how it has affected all parts of her life and health. She describes how that experience leads her to squash and the many lessons it, her coach Captain Ameen, and her squash friends Fay and Noor teach her. It's the sequel to her book Head Above Water: Reflections on Illness (2022), long-listed for The Barbellion Prize for writing on illness and disability, which also documents and analyzes her experience with MS.
Book Notes
As a sport story aficionado and reviewer, I am most interested in reading about women's diverse experiences with sports, the ways they incorporate sport into their busy lives, and the life lessons they learn from being athletes. In this book, Alshammari delivered on all of my favorite aspects of a great sport story.
She doesn't begin to write about playing squash until about 60% of the way through the book. Again, with my focus on sport stories, I wondered through the first half when we'd get to the squash playing, and I was happy when we did; however, I also recognized that in the first half+ of the story, Alshammari gives readers a clear picture of how she experiences MS, which is needed to show the importance of squash in her life and its transformative power.
And even though the first half+ of the story isn't specifically about sports, the hybrid style and occasional stream-of-consciousness writing kept me engaged. There's a mixture of traditional first-person narrative, poetry, and dialogue with Zari: a spirit who acts as a conscious or internal monologue for Alshammari. I googled "Zari" and learned that the name means "considering oneself feeble, infirm, and weak," which matches the way Alshammari portrays herself at first, but contradicts how Zari is portrayed as a spirit-character in the book. This adds intrigue and complexity to Alshammari's relationship with Zari and with herself.
Alshammari finds her way to squash through her friend, Fay, a dance instructor who believes in the healing power of dance, who also plays squash. It takes Alshammari time to settle into the sport because she's riddled with self-doubt. But she continues to hit new milestones, like playing in her first competition, finding new coaches, and playing with a new partner. While describing playing in her first competition, she writes, "With every ball I hit, I felt as though I was getting closer to freedom." Freedom for her is not only successfully getting to the end of the game and finishing with pride, but also freedom within herself, her mind, her body.
But squash is more than just freedom – it also becomes her way of life. After the tournament and after working with a new coach, Alshammari contemplates her changing identity: "I wasn't sure who I was anymore. Disabled or nondisabled. Past vs. present selves were images that I couldn't correlate. I positioned myself as an author and teacher, but never as a healthy person, never as a sports person, and most certainly not as a squash player. Who was I becoming? What would happen to my old self?"
Yes, yes, and yes! This is what I love about adult sportswomen's journeys. I cannot tell you how many sportswomen I've spoken to who said they never considered themselves athletes, despite years of participation and/or sports accomplishments, and how perplexed/delighted they become when they give themselves the possibility of identifying as "athlete." It breaks open, or quietly taps open, worlds of possibilities inside and outside of sport, which Alshammari shows in the concluding pages of her book.
Thank you, Dr. Alshammari, for bringing this to light so fully and candidly by sharing your sport story!
Confetti and Ashes: Excerpt
Check out an excerpt from Confetti and Ashes. And then get a copy of the full book!
Author Bio
Shahd Alshammari is Associate Professor of Literature and the author of Head Above Water: Reflections on Illness (Feminist Press, New York) and Notes on the Flesh (Faraxa: Malta). Head Above Water (2022) was longlisted for The Barbellion Prize for writing on illness and disability. Alshammari teaches literature and creative writing in Kuwait.
